WHOLLYHOLLY: Garden Update

My husband and I garden in central Texas. When other parts of the country are just getting into the swing of gardening, Texas is hot, hot, hot and gardening slows in July. The weeds in the garden are gigantic, the temperatures are over 100 degrees, and the mosquitoes are on the prowl for their victims.

This cantaloupe weighed over 3 pounds!

We are harvesting a lot of items right now-corn, cantaloupes (well, we are not harvesting them so much as collecting them because they are taking themselves off the vines and we just pick them up and take them into the house!), tomatoes, peppers, spaghetti squash, okra, Chinese long beans, and onions. We recently harvested about half a wheelbarrow of red and yellow onions. Some are larger than softballs! Yes, everything really is bigger in Texas!

In our area, we plant onions in November to get the largest onions possible.

Just as it is the hottest and we only want to be lounging inside with a cool drink, we need to start working and planning for our fall garden. In our area we are fortunate that we can garden just about the whole year around.

Our goal is to be able to produce all of the fruit and vegetables we want to eat. This year is the best we have done so far towards that goal. Last year, we added fruits to our garden. We planted grapes, dwarf pomegranates, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, two pear trees, and a fig tree. Our five blackberry canes produced a pint or more of berries every day for nearly three weeks. We are definitely going to expand the amount of blackberries we are growing!

There are few things I find more satisfying than creating a meal whose ingredients mainly came from our garden. I am looking forward to many more home grown meals and new recipes in the future and I will be sharing them right here with all of you!